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61 thoughts on “On progressive pragmatism”

Gaiosays:

Coke, this clarifies so many of your positions over the last year, as well as your new tone.

You used to destroy people’s foundations so they could rebuild. You were savage in good faith. It appeared as an unspoken agreement that if someone asked for advice, they were often asking to be torn clean apart.

But you don’t break your allies anymore. You may not like them. You may not agree with them. But you acknowledge them, and you acknowledge where they stand. Reduced to a cliche: ‘you choose your battles wisely’; inclusivity without complacency; exclusivity with a heart.

She’s always been cult-ish, don’t act like you aren’t sipping her kool-aid right now too.

And OP is just commenting on her voice. Voice is something Coke often writes about, and he’s right by the way. She’s drifted from ‘raging bitch’ to ’embrace the fucking change’ by her own words. And ye, I’m a proud card-carrying Coke cultist.

I was so glad to stumble across that post this morning. This whole election has been an eye-opening experience for me.

I was a die-hard Bernie supporter in the beginning. I even donated a small portion of my meager income to him on a few occasions. When Hillary got the nomination I was so disappointed, a little angry, even. Thankfully, I was able to dislodge my head from my ass long enough to educate myself on Hillary, thanks in no small part to Coke. I’ve come to respect and even admire her. I’m no longer voting for “the lesser of two evils”. I’m pumped as hell to help elect our first female president.

I mean, in many ways, Clinton and Stein have the same interests. Hillary has spent a large part of her career protecting American children, and Jill is making damn sure those damn wifi rays don’t get to their mushy brains.

As far as defenses of the ruthless global calculus is, that was a pretty weak one. I loathe Duterte, just so we’re clear, and I’m not an absolute pacifist. It’s true that the US wields enormous power, but I’m pretty skeptical of its ability to use it wisely – we’re talking about humans after all. The thing is, you never have to draw the connection between your actions and when they come to bite you in the ass. Most Americans don’t, not even the left-wing ones.

Right with you Betsy. We plant the seeds of new violence in so many military scenarios that it seems like community peace and security become afterthoughts.

Hillary is at least sane. And if we’re going to have a high tide of resistance to war/violence I’d much rather be pressuring and negotiating with a Clinton administration than a Trump one.

I have a sore spot in my heart though because that sentiment that I just expressed is held in reverse by so many people and if I breathe easier because she wins they’ll be going through a new anxiety spike and I’m worried about their reaction.

I mean, I’m not opposed to intervention on a principle against interventions, so much as I think they’re frequently a stupid idea. But I was definitely in favour of intervening in the Balkans and, well, in WWII.

As for the reaction of the people you speak of, I don’t know either. It depends on so much besides the US! Not having a hyper-chauvinist, neo-fascist US-Russia axis squeezing us in Europe will be quite nice, though.

I’m aware of Hillary’s warhawk tendencies; while I don’t approve of them (and remain hopeful that Congress and public sentiment can prevent her from taking America into another needless war), at least she’s not threatening to use nuclear weapons.

You really think we needed that orange sack of horseshit to expose the corruption of American politics? We all know it’s corrupt. (And a good chunk of us who know about that corruption also know it’s how shit gets done in Washington.) Trump hasn’t told us anything we don’t already know; he’s only told us that the corruption is worse and he’ll somehow “change everything” if he wins (which he won’t).

Trump brings something “different” to the table, yes — he brings a lack of experience as a politician, a lack of empathy, a lack of knowledge about everything from global politics to basic American civics, and a lack of the temperment and diplomacy necessary to deal with politicians within and outside of America. He brings the snake oil of “Make America Great Again” and peddles it to Straight White Christian Male America, which is the only major voting base Republicans have left after alienating non-whites, LGBT people, non-Christians, and a huge amount of women. He sits a plate of shit on the table, tells you it’s spaghetti (the greatest spaghetti), and expects you to be dumb enough to eat it while he laughs at your stupidity.

Donald Trump is the least-qualified candidate to have run for President on a major party ticket in my entire lifetime. A vote for him is a vote for a President who will destroy this country and its principles by trying to make it work for him when, in reality, he should be working for it. And in the unlikely-yet-still-possible chance that Trump wins the election, everyone who voted for him will have to take responsibility for putting that woman-groping, angry-tweeting, middle-class-destroying, bankrupt-happy failure of a human being in the world’s most powerful political office.

I’ll take responsibility for my vote when Hillary gets into the White House. I’m well aware of what my vote means and what having her as President means. “Same old shit” with a chance for actual progress by forcing her to lean left rather than stay just a little left-of-center (and avoid getting into another war) seems far more preferable than “changing things up” by dragging the country back to 1950 and threatening to use nuclear weapons.

We would all prefer a politician who has simultaneously served many decades in public service while being 100% adherent to some definition of “morally consistent” every moment of every day while making incredibly complex and challenging decisions.

FFS, the average joe on the street isn’t even morally consistent throughout the day.

Exactly. At that level of government, we can’t know what the right choice is; the decisions a secretary of state has to make don’t always have a clear right or wrong answer. Sorry that the Trumpers are too simple to understand that.

No. seriously. Fuck you. To think that there’s some magical concentration of stupidity and mysticism in the United States is in itself an act of stupidity and mysticism. There’s racism everywhere. There’s sexism everywhere. There’s religion everywhere. There’s no monopoly here, so take the nearest household appliance and shove it up your ass.

Alison please, France almost elected a far right nut, former tormentor in the algerian war and neo-nazi afficionado as president. And you don’t get as much opposite to the US than France in the western world.

Yeah we didn’t though (Chirac won by like 80% at the second round right ? and he’s the least charming person ever), and now the FN is promoting the same 60s left populist protectionism themes (some of which I still agree with) and the same nativist-but-not-intentional/explicitly-racist themes (none of which I agree with – I’m for free circulation of people and nationalization of people living here) as Donald Trump, and these ideas are going to work the same way on not only a part of the white campagnard population, but also second generation suburb immigrants. This is a certain departure from the FN’s previous open-market-minded racist political strategy and it is currently a visible party division (like Maréchal-Le Pen vs. Philipot).
Anyways, just to say that the frustration of the influence of the US on global policy (let’s not kid ourselves: the US may contain 300.10^6 people but nobody else really cares about their domestic policy) and political discourse us understandable to me at least.

With the US Republican Party you can even be an asexual lizard (cf Ted Cruz).
(Btw I’m B in the LGBTQIA spectrum so no offense intended.)
PS : I also meant naturalization, not nationalization in my previous comment.

you’ve made it more than clear that you do not give a single fuck about people outside the US or without proper citizen status.
there are many folks for whom the election is pretty much a lose-lose situation, so you can fuck right off with your condescending “you’re all like little children” rhethoric.

I have to say, as a South American woman who is very concerned about the result of your election, that I disagree. I was obviously hoping she’d win. I’m not suggesting that Trump should be president, nobody whose campaign is based almost solely on hate speech should.
But let me tell you how all that “do what needs to be done even if it means killing people” and “the U.S. airforce is keeping global peace” stuff sounds like to someone who is not from your country: it sounds arrogant, condescending and imperialistic. It’s not your government’s place to unilaterally decide the fate of the world, and it’s certainly not up to them to do whatever it takes, including waging wars on other countries, to achieve that.
Yes, you control us. We’re aware. We, Brazilians, as most Latin American countries, know all too well that the United States is basically ruling the world at this point. Years after the end of Brazil’s dictatorship (that your country funded, by the way) our politicians still make decisions based on your stock market.
You can think that this is the right thing to do, that it’s for the greater good or something. But know that you’re thinking that from a position of privilege, and that I, as most of the Brazilians I know and respect, would beg to differ.
I have, in fact, some friends who actually prefer that clown that will soon enough sit at your oval office. Because even with all of Trump’s hate speech and inappropriate behaviour, Hillary is the one who would’ve done more damage to the world. We don’t need anymore wars in the name of what the U.S. thinks is best for us.
Please note that I don’t disagree that the goals she has are important, but that’s just me. I’m one person and I have no right to decide anybody’s course of action for them, either. And the ways she was hoping to achieve those goals was just wrong.
I don’t mean to offend you. I’m just offering another point of view that you might like to consider. And I’m sorry if I was rude, but this is something that really upsets me.